While huge majorities
of the US public oppose war with Iran or US intervention in Syria, Congress and
the mainstream US media have stepped up the pressure for a more aggressive
stance on both fronts.With these
factors in mind, we might ask whether President Obama's speech this week at
the National Defense University  in which he tried to dispose of liberral
pressures on his policies re: drones, Guantanamo, and "the war on terror" 
should be read as a move away from a confrontation in the Middle East, or as an
attempt to secure his liberal base before more intense confrontations with Iran
and Syria.

Following a series of generally
unfruitful meetings regarding Iran's nuclear program, further diplomacy is now
on pause until after Iran's presidential election, which will take place on
June 14th.This week Iran's
Guardian Council disqualified the two presidential aspirants who might have
challenged the policies of Iran's Supreme Leader and the ruling conservative
circles; but the fact that the candidate who has emerged as favored to win has
been Iran's chief nuclear negotiator may be significant in the
future.

Towards Iran, the US Congress has
now done everything but declare war.In
the House this week, a committee reported out a bill that moved toward a full
trade embargo  or economic war  against Iran; while by a vote oe of 99 to 0
the Senate passed a "sense of the Senate" resolution essentially endorsing
any military action Israel might take against Iran, and calling on the Obama
administration to support whatever Israel does.

Leading media outlets in the United
States are also pushing hard for a more aggressive policy towards Iran, perhaps
increasingly so.Several articles linked
below illustrate this; the media's spinning of the latest report by the UN's
IAEA on Iran's nuclear program is a model of news-as-propaganda.One reason for this may be the greater
salience of Hezbollah, generally viewed in âthe Westâ as a proxy for Iran,
in the fighting in Syria.While
Hezbollah's role in the fighting is largely confined to areas of importance to
Hezbollah (the Lebanon-Syrian border) and Shiâism (a shrine desecrated earlier
by Opposition forces), Hezbollah's historic conflict with Israel and its
designation by the United States (and perhaps soon by the EU) as a "terrorist" organization have added a new element to the
internationalization of Syria's civil war.As this weekend's news suggests, the war is well on its way to spilling
over into Lebanon.

Once again I would
like to thank those who you who have forwarded this newsletter or linked it on
your sites.This and previous "issues" of the Iran War Weekly are posted at http://warisacrime.org/blog/46383.If you would like to receive the IWW
mailings, please send me an email at fbrodhead@aol.com.

---- The International Atomic Energy
Agency's (IAEA) May 2013 quarterly report on Iran's
nuclear program indicates that Tehran is continuing to move forward on its
nuclear program, installing more advanced centrifuges and building-up its
stockpiles of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent, and moving forward
on construction of its heavy water reactor at Arak. The report findings
underscore the urgent need to intensify negotiations with Tehran to resolve the
political questions surrounding Iran's nuclear program and to resolve the
outstanding questions regarding the potential military dimensions of the
program, but, at the same time, the findings reinforce earlier assessments that
Iran remains years away from obtaining a deliverable nuclear arsenal.

Media
Analysis

---- All this seems tame enough, but
a closer look at how the IAEA report was covered in the mainstream media is
instructive.For example, the New York Times story (by David E. Sanger and
William J. Broad) was headlined"Iran is Seen Advancing Nuclear Bid."What does this mean,"nuclear bid:"?It certainly fits comfortably with the claim
that Iran is making a"bid" for nuclear weapons; and the burden of the
Sanger/Broad story measures the dry facts in the IAEA report with the milestones
that would be passed if Iran were making nuclear weapons.So, for example, Iran continues to build its
heavy-water nuclear plant at Arak, "a source of plutonium," but the Times readers are not informed that Iran
does not have, and is not building, a reprocessing plant that would be required
to extract the plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.Similarly, Iran continues to enrich uranium
to 20 percent U235, a level required for medical purposes, but (ominously) only
a stones throw away from the 90 percent enrichment needed for a nuclear
weapon.But the diabolical Iranians are
converting their 20-percent uranium into metal oxide, useful for reactor fuel
but not for a bomb; thus diabolically keeping its stock of 20 percent uranium
gas below the level that could be further enriched to produce one nuclear bomb,
an Israeli "red line" that would be used to justify a military attack
against Iran.And (gasp) they have
installed some 600 more advanced centrifuges, but (again, diabolically) have yet
to bring them online."Much Ado About
Nothing," by Sanger and Broad.A more
balanced reading of the IAEA report might deduce that Iran is continuing to
assert its right to develop a nuclear program, while making concessions to "Western" fears about nuclear weapons and taking steps to prevent the
foreclosure of opportunities for continued negotiations.